“Colour is a power which directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul. It is therefore evident that colour harmony must rest only on a corresponding vibration in the human soul.” W. Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Wittenberg Schultz (New York 1947)

Did you know that colours are not the same for everyone? I recently discovered that some languages don’t have separate words for yellow and orange, or green and blue. Some people, however, in different countries have multiple different words that describe white such as the Inuits for example. Due to the environment they live in which is largely covered in snow they have invented different words to describe it. This proves how different colours have different meanings to people and can also be associated with different emotions.
Sometimes we say “I feel blue”, which means we are feeling sad, but we also say “I am green with envy”. Sometimes we go all red when we feel mad, and we also might blush or get rosy cheeks when we feel embarrassed.

There’s so much about colour that I can write about, but I thought it would be more interesting to share some fun facts that I have discovered.

Did you know that blue is the world’s most popular colour? And, did you know that pink has been proven to have a calming effect reducing aggression and hostility, it has also been used in some prisons and mental health care institutions to control the behaviour of prisoners and patients.

Mosquitoes love blue! Research shows that mosquitoes are attracted to dark colours, especially blue, so it is most probably best to keep away from this colour scheme when going camping or somewhere that is most likely to have been attacked by mosquitoes.

Yellow can cause dizziness and nausea. Although yellow is the colour of the sun, it is also thought to be a very irritating colour and can make you dizzy, which is why it is banned of used in aiplanes.

Red is the first colour babies can see! For the first few weeks, babies adjust their eyes to their new environment and can only see black and white, some shades too. It takes time for them to start distinguishing different colours and the first one they see is red.

Chameleons don’t only change colour to camouflage. As a child, I have always believed that changing their colour to match a background is their way of hiding. In fact, many species can only adjust their colour from shades of brown to green and back again. They change the colour of their skin to communicate with other chameleons.

Did you know that the Sun is actually white? Sun is essentially all colours mixed together, which appears to our eyes as white. From Earth, it appears yellow due to our atmosphere. But once you leave the Earth’s atmosphere, the Sun appears white rather than any single colour.

Colours don’t exist, they are all in our heads!
They are just the results of our brains trying to make sense of signals they receive from the outside. Objects don’t have a colour, but they give off light that appears to be a colour. So colours exist purely in our minds.